NCJ Number
79559
Date Published
1980
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This review assesses a study by the Westinghouse National Issues Center that describes the implementation of a crime reduction demonstration program in four public high schools in Broward County, Fla., and presents preliminary evaluation results.
Abstract
At each site, a team of researchers collected and analyzed crime data in order to isolate locations of crime problems and determine the social and physical strategies most appropriate to combat crime at each location. Physical design changes, sucha s new construction, renovations, and landscaping, were undertaken, along with social changes like increased student involvement in crime prevention. Since the strategies were based on the particular problems associated with various locations in each school, a variety of strategies initiated at each site. The evaluation design was subenvironmental approach, in that each strategy implemented by a school was assessed by data relevant to that strategy and location. The design generally used a pre- and post-implementation comparison within each site, among sites, and between the sites and all other high schools in the county. Many (22 of 38) of the planned strategies were either never implemented, partially implemented, or implemented in a modified form. More important, the demonstration program itself, with different strategies occurring in different schools and environments, makes it impossible to compare statistically the relative effectiveness of the various crime reduction strategies used. Therefore, little empirical support is available from this effort that documents a causal relationship between physical environmental factors and crime and crime prevention behaviors. For the original report, see NCJ 36574.